Brush takes first step toward container moratorium

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The Brush City Council voted 5-2 to approve an emergency moratorium on the placement of new shipping containers in city limits. That ordinance will need to be approved by 75 percent of the council on second reading.

The Brush City Council has taken the first step toward a blanket moratorium prohibiting the placement of cargo or shipping containers in the city.

The council supported the moratorium, 5-2, on first reading, but a final vote needs a three-fourths majority. It would fail if the 5-2 vote holds.

The moratorium was considered in response to increasing popularity of shipping containers as a storage options in Brush. The placement of those shipping containers within the city is not addressed under present regulations.

“The way the land use code is written, if it’s not a permitted use its unlawful, so if you bring something in that’s not permitted it’s an unlawful placement of whatever that structure is within the city and that’s the situation we are dealing with here,” City Attorney Robert “Bo” Chapin said.

Brush’s Planning Commission met at the end of July to discuss the cargo container issue and decided to work on developing explicit regulations to deal with the containers.

Assistant City Administrator Karen Schminke said it had been suggested that the city adopt a moratorium banning the placement of those containers, so that the city could take account of how many containers were presently in the city and where they were located.

The emergency ordinance was necessary in order to prevent residents from quickly moving to place more containers in the city ahead of any regulations, Schminke said.

City Councilman Rick Bain expressed concerns about the language of the proposed ordinance.

“[My first problem] is that it says whereas a number of cargo containers have been moved into the city in violation of land use code, but as near as I can tell reading the language code it doesn’t exclude them and it doesn’t permit them, so to say they are in violation of the land use code I don’t think is really accurate,” he said.

Bain also reminded council that the city had also used containers for storage in Brush.

“Section 4 says an emergency exists because a large number of cargo containers are being located unlawfully within the city but the problem I have with that is that if we identify it that way the city is as guilty as anybody else because we have them here,” he said. “I am totally in favor of writing regulations to control them, but I really don’t think it should be declared an emergency under these conditions and I think we should just block out some time to write the regulations and take care of it, because I think it looks bad to the public when we say they are being moved in illegally, yet people know the city has them and the fire department has them.”

Chapin responded that the issue was being brought up now because of the increase in containers being brought into the city. He also said the city would be subject to any regulations or moratoriums and would follow them.

Bain asked Chapin why the city had opted to place its own containers if such containers are not permitted.

“I don’t know,” Chapin said. “That was clearly an error on the city’s part to have done so.”

Mayor Chuck Schonberger likened the situation to a “mess” and said that while the city did not know how or why it was created it was now time for the city to clean it up.

“We don’t know how we got there, but this is where we are so we are just trying to proceed from where we are and take action,” he said. “We don’t want any bigger mess to come in and since we’re looking at it that’s when people will take advantage of it.”

Bain and Councilor Kim Dykes voted against the moratorium. Both said they supported the effort to control the containers but had concerns about the amendment’s wording.

Paul Albani-Burgio writes features and covers entertainment, the arts and community events for the Loveland Reporter-Herald and Longmont TImes-Call. He came to Loveland from Fort Morgan, where he covered city and county government, crime and the ups and downs of the local sugar plant. He has also written for 5280 and Boston magazines and Bizwest. He is a fan of old movie theaters, Thai food and, despite their unwavering tendency to break his heart, the Mizzou Tigers.